“I cried all night,” Dolly said, “cause I just pictured Elvis singing it.”
Back in 1974, Dolly Parton had a no. 1 hit with a song she’d written, I Will Always Love You. And a year later, she got word that the king himself, Elvis, wanted to record the song.
“I was so excited,” Dolly said.
And then, the night before the recording session was supposed to happen, Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told Dolly the deal.
“Elvis don’t record nothing unless we get the publishing rights or at least 50%.”
Dolly cried all night. But she said no. It was her song and it didn’t feel right giving away the rights to it.
In the end, Dolly made out all right. I Will Always Love You became a giant hit for Whitney Houston in 1995, and Dolly got over $10 million in royalties — in the 90s alone.
But most songwriters aren’t like Dolly. They give in. And apparently, this kind of thing is a dirty little secret of the music world, according to an article I read in Variety today.
Big stars routinely get songwriting credit — including publishing royalties — for songs they didn’t write or even help write.
But now, a bunch of songwriters are pushing back.
They find it outrageous that they are forced to share a part of their creative ownership with people who were not involved in the creation in any way.
It sounds like a perfectly legit complaint against a perfectly outrageous practice.
But it goes industry to industry, doesn’t it?
Take copywriting.
It’s standard that you write something and hand over all the control to the client.
In fact, if you’re very good and you manage to claw your way to the top, then you can hope to hand over all control of your copy in exchange for a few percent of the revenue it generates.
But it don’t have to be like that.
I heard Dan Kennedy talk about different things he does. How he bakes into his contract that he might later reuse copy that he’s writing for that client. Or that he might use copy on the current project that he wrote for a previous client. Or how he creates templetized copy, and licenses it to clients instead of giving away the copyright.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to be outraged if you are working the same standard way as every other copywriter. I just want to, as Ben Settle likes to say, give you options for thinking differently.
Because the standard way is not the only way it can be. You can create your own rules, and like Dolly and Dan, you can stick to them. And if a potential client doesn’t go for it, you can sing him a bit of Dolly’s song:
Good-bye, please don’t cry
‘Cause we both know that I’m not
What you need…
And then, when the song ends, you wonder what’s next. Perhaps you open up your inbox and read a new email I’ve written, and get some more ideas for thinking differently. Because I have an email newsletter — click here if you’d like to sign up for it.